Straight Talk in a Crooked World

The Best We Can Do?

Today is Super Tuesday and two very dangerous candidates for the office of POTUS predictably have the lead. Recent presidential debates have been more like The Jerry Springer Show than a forum for intelligent discourse. Candidates sling mud and dish out grandiose promises and attack other Americans without having any rational or substantive plans to actually help this ailing nation.

Is this the best we can do? It’s embarrassing.

I am embarrassed that so many people of my persuasion have gathered behind Trump. What has Trump done that’s conservative? Our political views can evolve with time, but historically, I don’t remember much about this savvy businessman that speaks to freedom, faith, family, and limited federal government. I’m also concerned about his narcissism, as evidenced by his disruptive nature and unrestrained, frenetic insult lobbing. I greatly admire Trump’s directness and unapologetic defense of America, but otherwise am stymied as to how he’s qualified to be Commander in Chief.

On the other side, we have a woman who claims to be a great champion for women’s rights but during her tenure as Secretary of State paved the way for an ideology that sends women’s rights– and human rights– back to the Dark Ages. Hillary Clinton’s actions and policies have enabled the dark side of Islam to rape, torture, and murder Christians and others who stand in the way of their drive to rule the world. And this at the expense of decent Muslims and valuable allies like Jordan’s King Abdullah! She failed to protect Americans in Benghazi, her email server fiasco endangered American lives and guaranteed that our enemies would have classified information, she and her husband’s pasts are dark and questionable places strewn with female victims– why is she not in federal prison?

There are many conservatives pulling for Bernie to be the Democratic nominee because he’s not the establishment candidate and doesn’t seem to have these skeletons hanging around. While the political system he stands for has never worked out in any country, ever– socialism and communism are actively failing this very day in other countries (Sweden? Venezuela?)– he doesn’t seem to have the baggage his opposition does. While I would no more want him for president than I would Barney the purple dinosaur with serial killer eyes, I find his straight talk refreshing. I understand why people gravitate towards him. He’s real. He doesn’t need carefully planned and scripted hollow sound bites to gain support.

John Kasich could have done this job and had attracted supporters on both sides of the aisle. He’s highly qualified and has been successful in executive roles. But he’s not scrappy enough, or flamboyant enough, or crazy enough for the American public. If we elected an American president based on resumes and experience, like we do for… oh, every other type of job out there, he’d be a shoo-in. But no… we’re a society so addicted to drama that we catapult the loud, boisterous candidate who’s hardly ever explained how he plans to do anything to the front of the line. And the loud, boisterous one likes to get the second and third place candidates riled up so they come across as more drama, less substance as well.

Seriously, people? Where is the honor? The integrity? The intellect? The moral fortitude? The lack of questionable ties to shady Muslim organizations/the mob/the elite/the globalists/maybe the KKK? Our country, especially after the untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia, needs powerful, effective leadership that can UNITE US now more than ever. Electing a president who demonizes the opposition and prevents us from working together to defend our own people (sound familiar?) opens the door to international interests who seek to make America subservient. There are those who seek to punish us for being the great and powerful nation we are, to level the playing field, to lower our standards of living so that we become nothing more than a food source for the rest of the world.

We need a true American who will keep us focused on what we have in common rather than reasons to revile each other. At the end of the day we want our families and our property to be safe. We want to have jobs. We need food on the table. We need clean water and a solid infrastructure and a balance between humans and nature. If we continue down this path of trying to curtail others’ freedoms and automatically labeling the views of those who disagree with us hate, we are getting closer and closer to the godless regimes that murdered millions upon millions in the last century. We need to remember that we are a free people with the freedom to disagree and that despite our differences there are many things we can accomplish together to preserve our way of life.

This person is not Clinton. This person is not Trump. I’d probably like Bernie in person but he stands for an archaic, failed, controlling philosophy that makes some people work themselves into the ground for all people. Kasich could have done it but he’s been waved off by a collective (and erroneous) yawn. So who’s left? Cruz, who could do a fine job, and Rubio, who has great promise but is not trusted on matters of immigration. But no. We don’t want stable or normal or steady. It seems that today we showed we are suckers for words and promises and flaky, transparent campaign strategies rather than character and a substantive, proven commitment to this nation’s best interests.

If this were an exercise in dating, folks, we just picked the players who will treat us like a queen, can’t believe anyone else ever treated us that way, were immediately dramatic and exciting, tell us they’re our only true soul mates, and otherwise display a plethora of red flags that speak to their self-centeredness and thirst for control. This never ends well. They’re the ones who use up all your energy, take you for all you’re worth, and leave you stunned on the side of the road when you’ve ceased to be useful.

We could have done better than this. But we are collectively advancing two people who have no business being president closer and closer to the White House. It’s a sad day when you find yourself getting behind one candidate just to prevent the other from obtaining the most important job in the world.

If Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt, Jefferson, or the other greats could see us now, they would shake their heads in bewilderment, wondering how they could have set the standard so high only to have us sink so low.

That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs– pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them. –C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity